


Time

by HollyMartins



Series: We All Shine On (Reddie Adventures in Parenthood) [3]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Deadlights (IT), Divorce, Domestic, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fear, IT Chapter Two Spoilers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24522667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollyMartins/pseuds/HollyMartins
Summary: Richie painfully realizes that nothing lasts forever.Or, the author gets a sick enjoyment of throwing lots of angst into Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak's life together.Note: reading the beginning of this series is not necessary but encouraged.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: We All Shine On (Reddie Adventures in Parenthood) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1629955
Comments: 12
Kudos: 19





	Time

**Author's Note:**

> More angst for the Tozier-Kaspbrak family. I just can't help it with these two. 
> 
> You do not necessarily need to read the earlier titles in this series, particularly "Two negatives make a positive" but I would recommend it just for clarity's sake. 
> 
> Enjoy and thank you so very much reading. Please remember that comments are love and writers as insecure as myself depend on them for nourishment.
> 
> Not beta-read so any mistakes are my own.

Richie hears an unfamiliar sound and glances around his trailer confused until he spots his nearly dead iPad wedged between two couch cushions. He rushes over and picks it up, swiping at the screen. Suddenly the annoying trilling stops and the screen fills with the image of his daughters’ pixelated faces. Richie grins.

“Hi, Papa!” they all shout at once at different octaves.

“Hi, girls,” he replies, settling against the couch. “I miss you guys.”

“Miss you, too,” Tess and Lydia answer as Marisol appears more entranced by her own face staring back at her in the lower corner of the phone.

“How was your day? Did you kick butt at yoga, Lyds?”

“Yoga was yesterday,” Lydia reminds him. Richie winces.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Well, what did you guys do today? Not drive Dad crazy, I hope.”

Richie thinks he hears Eddie make a derisive noise off-screen but isn’t sure until he sees Tess glance to her right.

“We went to the library and got new books,” Lydia explains patiently. “Then Dad made us practice piano and then we had dinner and now we’re talking to you.”

“Sounds like a full day,” Richie replies, nodding. “Wanna hear what I did?”

“Sure.”

“I sat in a chair and ate four bags of sour cream and onion chips while waiting for them to call my name to film one line,” Richie says, sighing dramatically. “I’m going to be so fat when I get home.”

“That’s okay,” Tess says gently.

“Why does it take so long for them to film you?” Lydia asks.

“Because there’s a lot of work that has to go on behind the scenes before the actors can even set foot on set,” Richie explains. “All the lighting and decorating and the director has to figure out exactly what he wants to do. It’s a lot.”

“Is it boring?”

“Yeah,” Richie admits, “but it’s fun when you’re filming.”

“Are you gonna be famous?” Marisol asks brightly.

Richie laughs.

“I highly doubt it, kiddo,” he says. “I don’t think a whole lot of people are going to see this movie.”

“We’ll see it!”

“Thanks, but I think it’s a bit too grown-up for you guys. Maybe when you’re older.”

Marisol whines and Lydia hushes her impatiently.

“Where’s your dad?” Richie asks. “You guys didn’t bury him in the backyard or anything, right?”

“He’s right here,” Tess says. “Do you wanna talk to him?”

“If you guys are bored of me, sure.”

Lydia immediately picks up the iPad and hands it over, the screen briefly showing the ceiling before Eddie’s face fills the screen. He looks tired.

“Hey, babe,” Richie says brightly.

“Hey,” Eddie replies, rubbing at his eyes distractedly.

“You look great.”

“Shut up.”

“Dad, don’t say that!” Marisol insists off-screen.

“Sorry,” Eddie mutters. “I’m exhausted.”

“Aw, babe.”

“Gross,” Marisol pipes up.

“Quiet!” Tess insists.

Richie stifles a laugh.

“Work has been nuts,” Eddie sighs. Richie watches him look to his right and lift his arm. Tess snuggles close against him and rests her head against him. “Half the office is on vacation and between taking on all that extra work and entertaining these three…”

“We can take care of ourselves, Dad,” Lydia insists apparently from across the room.

“Yeah,” Marisol agrees in her young voice. Eddie merely sighs.

“When are you coming home?” he asks instead.

“Two more weeks, I think,” Richie answers. “Unless they want reshoots. There was some talk of that earlier.”

Richie notices the dark shadow that passes over his husband’s face and swallows down the tiny spark of guilt in his throat.

“I’ll be home soon,” he insists. “And my sister is there for you guys. She can watch the girls.”

“I know,” Eddie says. He looks down and frowns, lifting his phone in his free hand. “I gotta take this. Here.” He hands the iPad to Tess and steps away from the couch. Their middle daughter gazes down at the screen and offers a tight smile. Richie frowns.

Like all things in life, it happens both slowly and quickly. Richie should’ve seen it coming, but he was never that good at introspection. It’s much easier to laugh it off and pretend everything is fine but Eddie...Eddie isn’t like that.

“This isn’t real,” Richie says, shaking his head. He came home two weeks ago, a month later than he had promised. “None of this is real.”

“Stop it,” Eddie demands, “stop pretending for once in your fucking life.”

Richie looks up and puts his hands together in supplication.

“Eddie, I…”

“How could you not see we’ve been in the shit?” Eddie sighs, looking so exhausted Richie wonders how he’s even standing. “Have you just been that far up your own ass, you didn’t notice?”

“No, I did...I mean, I saw but…”

Eddie shakes his head and runs a hand through his graying hair.

“Everything has been about you, Richie,” he says, defeatedly. “Everything. Richie wants me to move to divorce my wife and move to LA with him. I divorce her and move to LA. Richie wants to move back across the country. We pick up and move across the country. Richie wants kids. We get some kids. Richie wants to be a stay-at-home dad, so you’ll have to work longer hours, Eddie. I do it. I fucking do it. And now Richie wants to go back to Hollywood, go pretend to be a star again and I say, Ok, but can you wait until the girls go back to school so I can keep working and not worry about who is going to look after them all day? No, Richie goes in the beginning of summer and doesn’t come back for months. I ask Richie to Facetime and call regularly but he forgets half the time. I have to answer the girls’ questions about where you are and guess what? I don’t know the answers. I don’t fucking know because you don’t tell me. And I’m fucking exhausted.”

Richie blinks at Eddie, his heart a concrete mass in his chest and his lungs trapped in a vice.

“You’ve…” he manages to gasp out, “you’ve always felt this way?”

Eddie just looks at him.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I did,” Eddie replies, “but you never listened.”

“No,” Richie gasps again, “no, that’s not true. I never...I would never…”

Eddie gazes at him with such sadness, it takes Richie’s breath away.

“Eddie, I lo—”

The door creaks open and Richie whirls around just in time to see Tess scramble away and rush down the hallway. He stands there mutely as Eddie hurries out after her and, not for the first time, he realizes he is just a coward.

He hates paperwork. He hates lawyers. He hates this table between him and Eddie and most of all, he hates himself. He wants to hate Eddie but even now, he can’t.

He never lifts his gaze from Eddie’s face, even when their lawyers are addressing him directly. He was never one to believe in telepathy but for each of these meetings, he has tried to concentrate every mental ability to silently tell Eddie to end this, that he’s sorry, that they can figure this out but none of it seems to work. When he was a kid, he used to pretend he had the Force. He’d give anything to have it now.

The meeting ends and Richie realizes he has no idea what, if anything, has been resolved but that’s what he pays a lawyer for, right? He stands when everyone else does and asks Eddie to stay with him for a moment. Eddie’s lawyer opens his mouth but Eddie nods and suddenly, they are alone in an unfamiliar office room that Richie would love to set on fire.

The two men stare at one another and Richie wonders just how to say the right thing and if Eddie will wait while he calls Bill for the perfect words but instead, he just blurts out, “We don’t have to do this.”

“Rich…” Eddie sighs.

“Don’t take my family away,” he begs. “I can’t lose you or the girls.”

“You’re not losing the girls,” Eddie says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I’m losing you,” Richie continues, “and I’m losing the girls with you. I’m losing waking up every day as a family and the two of us raising our kids. I’m losing…”

“Enough,” Eddie says, his eyes tired and sad. Richie wants to wipe away that look on his face but he knows he can’t, having been the one who put it there. “It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late,” Richie insists.

“This isn’t a movie,” Eddie says. “Marriages don’t get resolved at the last minute. You should know that, you helped disintegrate my last one.”

Nausea sweeps through Richie with such force, he nearly staggers.

“What...you didn’t love her,” he insists desperately. “You loved me.”

Eddie smiles one of his tight, pained smiles and shrugs.

“Everything has been for you, Richie,” he says quietly. “Let me have something for once.”

“Eddie…”

Eddie reaches up and rests his hand briefly on the side of Richie’s face and offers a look of genuine compassion. For a second, Richie thinks he’s won but then the hand is gone and Eddie leaves the room without a backwards glance.

“Okay,” Richie says as he opens the car door, “hugs and kisses before you go in.”

Lydia, Tess, and Marisol amble out of the car, each holding their backpacks and already dressed for bed. Richie is surprised that Tess is the first one to stand on her tiptoes and kiss him but she quickly runs towards the front door, where Eddie is waiting patiently. She grasps his hand and waits for her sisters. Richie’s heart cracks a bit further.

“Bye, Papa,” Marisol says brightly, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him repeatedly on his cheeks. “See ya soon!”

Richie puts on a smile and nods.

“Yeah, have fun with Daddy, okay?” he offers.

Marisol nods and waves at her father. Perhaps it’s because she’s the youngest but she has been seemingly unaffected by all this change and upheaval. Small miracles, right?

Richie turns and Lydia is staring up at him, her eyes wide and wet. This is the hardest part.

“Be good, okay?” he says quietly, clearing his throat. “And keep an eye on your sisters.”

Lydia says nothing, nods once, and lifts her backpack onto her shoulder. The two gaze at one another and Richie has the distinct feeling that this is one of those crucial moments in his daughter’s life and he really should say something profound. But all that comes out is, “I’ll see you in a couple days. Won’t be long.”

Lydia’s mouth tightens and she nods again. One tear slips out and she brushes at it quickly.

“Come here,” Richie murmurs and takes her into his arms, squeezing her tightly. He kisses the top of her head repeatedly. “I love you. I love you so much. I love all you girls.”

“What about Dad?” Lydia mutters against his chest.

Richie wonders how it is possible to walk upright and breathe with a thoroughly destroyed heart but he shrugs it off.

“I love Dad, too,” he replies quietly. He leans back and gently takes his eldest daughter’s face in his hands. “That’s why I need you to be good and help him, okay? I need you to keep it together for him and your sisters.”

Lydia nods and sniffs.

“You can break down later with me,” Richie offers, smiling crookedly.

She nods again and wipes at her eyes before squaring her shoulders. Richie smiles again and kisses her on her forehead before nodding towards the door. She turns and heads to her father and sisters.

“Have fun,” he repeats loudly, waving.

Marisol waves happily as Eddie opens the front door and leads the way in. Richie stands there, frozen by pain, as he watches Eddie disappear inside, followed by his three daughters. Tess is the last one inside, and when she closes the door behind her, she doesn’t look back at him.

* * *

The first thing Richie noticed was the sharp, shooting pain in his legs, followed closely by a headache that quite literally felt like an explosion. He blinked several times, his mouth still hanging open as he gasped for breath and tried not to vomit. How long it took before his vision cleared, he had no idea, but suddenly, Eddie’s face, bruised and filthy and yet elated, was above him repeating his name breathlessly.

“Hey, Richie I think I got It, man!” he shouted. “I think I killed It!”

Eddie.

Richie raised his hands to touch him, make sure he was real, when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Clown rearing It’s ugly head.

It all happened in a flash. Richie grasped Eddie’s shoulders and yanked with what little strength he had left but the claw still went through Eddie’s side as blood spurted out of him.

“Richie,” he gasped, his voice high and unnatural.

“Eddie,” Richie sobbed and brought his arms around him, refusing to allow the Clown to take Eddie with It. Someone, Richie had no idea who, managed to grasp the tentacle and yanked it away, tearing it off of the Clown and eliciting a primordial scream that seemed to come from the depths of time itself.

“Eddie,” Richie repeated, blood and tears in his mouth, “Eddie, Eddie, stay with me. Stay with me, Eddie.”

“Richie.”

He tightened his grip around Eddie and buried his face against Eddie’s hair, clenching his eyes shut. In the dark, he thought he saw the misty outlines of three little girls far off in the distance but they were gone as he felt Eddie go limp and cold in his arms.

“Richie, you need to sleep,” Bev offered gently, squeezing his shoulder.

“I slept earlier.”

“In a hospital chair,” she sighed. “Come on back to the house with me. Ben and Mike are on duty now.”

Richie shook his head.

“I need to be here in case he wakes up.”

Bev sat beside him and took his hands into her own. He knew enough to not look at her, certain that if he did, he would break down again.

“Eddie wouldn’t want you sitting here all day and night for him,” she said.

“You don’t know what Eddie wants,” he hissed, taking his hands from her grasp.

“Baby,” she whispered and brushed a lock of his hair off his forehead.

Richie couldn’t help it. He closed his eyes as tears began to fall and he leaned forward over his knees as he sobbed. Bev patiently rubbed his back, shooting nasty looks to whoever stopped and stared at the strange, disheveled pair in the hospital corridor.

“It’s going to be okay,” she insisted as he slowly quieted down. “The doctors said no major organs were hit and he didn’t lose that much blood. He’s going to be okay, Richie.”

“You don’t know that,” he gasped, straightening and staring at his old friend. “You said you saw us all die. Isn’t this what you saw?”

Bev took his hand again and squeezed. She offered a small smile.

“I think It was just trying to scare me,” she said quietly. “I think the Deadlights are just...our worst fears come to life. Worse than whatever the Clown could show us.”

Richie swallowed and looked away, his body going stiff. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her cock her head to the side.

“What did you see?” she whispered.

Richie closed his eyes and the vision of three unfamiliar girls swam mistily to his mind. He concentrated, recalling the sight of Eddie staring at him with such deep anger and frustration, it felt more real than anything the Clown had done. He saw himself sobbing in a car as he drove away from a house, every instinct in his body screaming, Go back to them. He saw himself alone in an empty apartment, surrounded by photos of a family he threw away as he stared down at a plain wedding ring in his hand. He opened his eyes again and it was all gone, leaving behind only a vague sense of unease about the future and voice in his head telling him to not fuck it up.

“I don’t remember,” he muttered, shivering, “but I guess it must’ve been my worst fear.”

**Author's Note:**

> Stop by hollymartinswrites.tumblr.com to say hi! Thank you again so very much for reading!


End file.
